If you have any trouble getting CableCards from your cable company, there are two things we'd like to ask you to do:

* First, call TiVo Customer Support and ask for help. One of the people on our HD team will stay on the line as you call back the cable company, and they'll help work things out for you. Do this first. We want you to get your CableCards!

* Second, take a moment and document your experience with the cable company for us. We have a webform for you to use, and these reports will be important in helping us assure a smooth customer experience, both today and down the road. It's really important to us that we have your issues documented well. Here's a link to the form.

If you have any trouble getting CableCards from your cable company, there are two things we'd like to ask you to do:

* First, call TiVo Customer Support and ask for help. One of the people on our HD team will stay on the line as you call back the cable company, and they'll help work things out for you. Do this first. We want you to get your CableCards!

* Second, take a moment and document your experience with the cable company for us. We have a webform for you to use, and these reports will be important in helping us assure a smooth customer experience, both today and down the road. It's really important to us that we have your issues documented well. Here's a link to the form.

Thanks!
Pony

Hey Pony:

When I submit this text on the page, it doesn't take it...

The experience has been anything but wonderful. Basically, the cable employees really don't seem to like CableCARD. I get the whole "you won't have a bunch of features" tactic in an attempt to scare me away. Obviously, I notify them that I don't want On-Demand (have never used it), and I want to get rid of all the crap they constantly advertise in the GUI. (That annoys some Comcast people, who I think see CableCARD as bad for their business.)

I've made no fewer than 5 calls attempting to get the cable cards to work. At this point, I can only get the 1st card to work. The second card generates a AUTH: MISSING_PROGRAM_REKEY tag under conidtional authorization. I suspect that Comcast has an issue with two tuners on the same line for some unknown reason, as I've had that problem previously. They did give me the cableCARDS quickly, but getting them to work, that's another story.

Gerhard

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3 x Tivo Premier Units
1 x TivoHD unit

Every seen the movie office space? These Tivos are in the Xerox II graveyard:

My install was just completed. When the tech arrived, he asked was he really installing into a Tivo S3? When I said yes, he immediately asked if a coworker could come over to see how the install works. Five minutes later, the second tech was there. They proceeded to install the cards and get the paring information.

The first mistake was not following TiVo's guidelines exactly. They installed the two cards, called in the pairing information and then tried to authorize the two cards one at a time.

The the first card was set up and working in 2-3 minutes. The tech noticed that the second card had previously been installed somewhere else and had not be cleared of it's previous configuration. While clearing the second card, the tech somehow managed to clear both cards.

We started again, this time following the instructions about completely setting up the first card, including authorizations for the premium channels, and then proceeding to the second card.

The total appointment was a little over 1 hour. I am quite happy and the techs are happy also to have had a knowledgeable customer to "learn" with.

I am apparently the third S3 install in the Cox Orange County area.

The techs called their boss to warn them about some of the difficulties I had with the order takers on the phones. They warned the boss that they should re-think the 2 digital outlet fee rule as well as the 2 install charges. I don't know if anything will change but it is nice to hear them looking out for the customer.

Overall, I am quite satisfied. I expected the worst and was quite pleasantly surprised with the outcome.

my installer had no idea how to install cable cards he said this was the first time he was doing any cable card install... So on the screen it says to use the bottom one first and he kept doing the top one, and it wouldnt work.... so I told him I will install and lo and behold if you follow the directions and put it in the bottom one first it worked just fine.. besides that everything has been grate

The experience has been anything but wonderful. Basically, the cable employees really don't seem to like CableCARD. I get the whole "you won't have a bunch of features" tactic in an attempt to scare me away. Obviously, I notify them that I don't want On-Demand (have never used it), and I want to get rid of all the crap they constantly advertise in the GUI. (That annoys some Comcast people, who I think see CableCARD as bad for their business.)

I've made no fewer than 5 calls attempting to get the cable cards to work. At this point, I can only get the 1st card to work. The second card generates a AUTH: MISSING_PROGRAM_REKEY tag under conidtional authorization. I suspect that Comcast has an issue with two tuners on the same line for some unknown reason, as I've had that problem previously. They did give me the cableCARDS quickly, but getting them to work, that's another story.

Gerhard

I've passed this along to the team, and apologize for the problem. We'll look into it.

When its working, I'll submit on the page - but the details are in the Comcast thread. Currently only at 50% (1 card) and about 4 hours on the phone with Comcast - just to get it scheduled after many calls and misinformation.

He called in to get them authorized and the tech center started to choke when the installer said there were 2 cards on one TV. We told the tech center we had a specific host id for each card and he said we'd try it.

Cards authorized with no problems.

Everything seems to be fine, except I wasnt able to get 4 movie channels, strangely 502, 504, 506, 508, although the odd channels worked fine. Will mess with it more tomorrow.

Iíve been trying for several days to get cablecards for my soon-to-be delivered Tivo series 3. Comcast has proven simply incapable of providing them. Because I expected problems, I kept a log of my adventures.

9/15/06.
Called 1-800-comcast to request cablecards. Was urged to reconsider because of all the things Iíd give up, such as on-demand, etc. Eventually was told that I needed to pick them up at Comcast office and was given address. Called Comcast tech support to confirm and was told the same thing.

9/18/06
Went to Comcast office. Was told that cablecards could NOT be pickup there. Must schedule a service appointment. Said he would do this for me and call me later with a date and time. Never called.

9/19/06 morning
Called 800-Comcast and was told again once again to pick up a Comcast office. Disputed my claims that they were not available there. Said that they didnít have them either. Politely asked to speak to a manager and was disconnected.

Called 800-comcast again and related my story. Was asked multiple times to consider Comcast DVR. Was told that cablecards might not be available in my area, that Tivo was not compatible with Comcast, and eventually that I could order them but would have to do so one card one at a time, as two separate orders and to separate visits. Was eventually transferred to a supervisor and was told the case would be escalated and would call me by the end of the day. Never called.

9/19/06 evening.
Called 800-Comcast once again. Rep speculated that it could be a supply problem. Was told that they are not guaranteed to be compatible with Tivo anyway. Suggested Comcast DVR instead. Transferred to another rep when I began to loose patience. Was told that case had been escalated and would receive a call by the end of the day. Never called.

As it stands, I have no cablecards and no leads on getting them. When the opportunity came for the Series 3, I jumped on it. The only thing keeping me going now is my refusal to let Comcast win.

..snip The only thing keeping me going now is my refusal to let Comcast win.

Wow, I feel your pain and totally relate, (Iíve had many probs with Charter, in another thread) Iím with you on your, would quit but refuse to let them win attitude. Good for you. Your helping others as well. Keep on keeping on, and good luck,,,,,,, and be sure to update. Thanks
P.S. Call Tivo and they will get on the line 3rd party style, see post #31

The initial install from Charter went fine. Cards worked and everything was fine.

I had to send that S3 back to TiVo and I moved the cards to a replacement. I called Charter on Saturday to tell them and the CSR said no problem. I gave him the numbers and he said I was set. It seemed to be OK - but later I found some channels didn't work, I got the 'Please call to activate' screen from the CableCARD. I *knew* what it was - they didn't update my Host IDs.

So I called support again on Sunday, but the person I got couldn't get it and said they needed to send someone out. OK, fine. So they came Tuesday and spent most of an hour playing around, hitting the cards, turning off digital tier, turning it on, etc. I said upfront I thought it was my Host IDs. So, after trying everything else, they checked the Host IDs - which were wrong. So they corrected that, and everything was fine.

The techs were all good guys, but I could tell CableCARD was still a bit alien.

__________________
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the error 161-1 is notorious with sony ( I hade this one one of my HD tvs) it is a bad card reader... you sould contact tivo about this. once sony changed the card reader it has worked like a champ for over a year

My card install had gone alright, now I'm fighting a battle to get digtial, not analog channels. I get all the channels I should, but the lower channels are broadcast in both digital and analog in preparation for turning off analog. I actually want the digital channels (though some people prefer analog), the analog quality sucks, and digital takes less disk space.

I ring Comcast to get the cards reprogrammed to present the digital channels instead, the rep seems to be just about to do this when she told me my system didnt have the digital versions yet, and she couldn't tell me when they were due.

So I go looking for the digital versions to check this story. To tune to a random QAM channel you have to remove the cable cards. So I did that, got 430 channels, then looked through them to see which channels were what, I found most of the basic channels. So I know that the rep was wrong, I do get the digital channels, the cards just need to be told this.

So this morning I ring again. This time the rep tells me the cable cards can't get those channels, that I need a cable box to get them. I couldn't persuade her this was all in her hands. I'm supposed to be getting a call from a supervisor about this, I'll beleive that when I hear it.

If you get recording quality options from TiVo, it's analog. If there's no option for the recording quality, it's digital. There may be another way to test, but that's how I did it. However, I can clearly tell just by looking that it's digital. The artifacts and video quality of the cable company's digital channels is noticably different than what I get when the TiVo is encoding from an analog signal.

The easiest way is to hit the record button. If it offers quality choice (Eg "Record at best Qulaity"), its analog. If it offers no such choice its digital.

There's also the diagnostic screen next to the system information. It'll tell you what each tuner is doing, the "modulation" entry seems to the important one, if it says QAMXXX its digtial. It seems to say "Unknown" for analog.

Just got my cablecard install done with... The guy ran into problems and called into the main office. He was transferred to the head of new installs who told him that she had just received a S3 at the office and had just gone through the setup. There was an issue with the way they were trying to initialize the cards, she quickly figured that out and I was up and running.

Buckeye Cable here in Toledo has definitely changed since I first moved here.

I've passed this along to the team, and apologize for the problem. We'll look into it.

OK, I'm getting wise to this TiVo web feedback thing.

The first time I went to the feedback page (last week), I got an error. Then I forgot all about it and was sticking to the forums. Then I saw Pony's posting requesting feedback on the URL provided, so I tried it again. This time I just entered "just testing" rather than type out my whole story again.

It's still not working. I'm on Windows XP using Firefox, and got:

ADODB.Parameter error '800a0d5d'
Application uses a value of the wrong type for the current operation.
/includes/dbConnOpen.inc.asp, line 640

As it stands, I have no cablecards and no leads on getting them. When the opportunity came for the Series 3, I jumped on it. The only thing keeping me going now is my refusal to let Comcast win.

I had a similar experience in the office (Sunnyvale) but had read in one of these forums that you should call 1-800-COMCAST and as soon as you talk to someone, ask to be transferred to "The Cable Card Department". It worked. I got someone who knew about cable cards. Didn't have the foggiest idea what a TiVo Series 3 was, and also didn't know that BOTH cards were supposed to be free, but the put me on hold, checked with a supervisor, and wrote it all up just like I wanted. I added Digital Classic ($9.95/mo) to my expanded-basic analog service, with two cable cards, and a one-time charge of $15.99 for a truck roll to do the "install".

You'll probably be feeling pretty good (as I was) once you get that far. Not so fast. Yesterday the guy brings two cards. We follow the VERY sparse instructions that came in the box from TiVo, but (IMO) TiVo could have done SO much more to tell you what the heck to expect when you stick the card in. It says to insert the first card and then have the installer call (corporate) to activate it. There is NO information as to how to verify that it's been activated, and (at least on older systems like Sunnyvale's 550) it takes a while for any information to flow down to the card from the head end.

TiVo reported that the card had been inserted, but was "waiting for channels". A few minutes later a CableCard (funky black screen) pops up on the screen, and somewhere along the way I get a TiVo warning that I need to repeat guided setup. Nothing was working, so I rebooted. Still nothing, so I (re-)did the guided setup while he waited. After that (though I suspect it may have been simply because the programming finally arrived) we got channels. We inserted the second cable card, called to activate it, and (again, due to lack of information) had no obvious way to figure out if it was working but we had channels on "Live" so he left.

Last night, it seemed that I wasn't getting ALL of new channels -- plenty of "in the clear" and even free HD channels, but not some of the (encrypted) digital classic ones. Then I discovered the "Test Channels" option on the cable card menu (which should be first and foremost on the installation sheet, to verify that EACH card is getting ALL channels). Here I discovered that cable card 2 was getting NO channels.

I called Comcast this morning, and through a combination of rebooting TiVo (which takes quite a while) and having them re-send the programming for the second card, I was able to get the second card to receive everything that is normally in the clear (QAM), BUT no (oddly enough, encrypted) Digital Classic channels.

They sent out a tech to swap out the second card. We futzed around with the original two cards for a while: we swapped slots and proved, fwiw, that it doesn't matter which card is in which slot -- the "good" card now worked in slot 2, and the "bad" card still didn't get encrypted channels in slot 1. We put the "good" card back in slot 1, replaced the "bad" card, called up to activate it, and a few minutes later I was able to get all channels (again in "test channels") on both cards.

The key point for me was that you can't simply "switch tuners" by hitting "Live" twice, as TiVo is playing games behind the scenes (e.g. if it's not recording anything at the time) and there doesn't appear to be any good way to view the channels on a specific card EXCEPT in: Messages & Settings: Settings: Cable Card: (select card): Test Channels screen. That should be made crystal clear in the notes, along with some hints on when and why you need to re-run guided setup (if it has NOTHING to do with validating channels, then tell the user to defer it and don't make the cable guy wait -- that's just gonna piss off the cable people), and some notes about the fact that it takes a while to receive the card activation. The other cable card screens seem to be next to useless, at least without more information describing what they mean and what to look for when troubleshooting.

Just my $.02. I'm a bleeding edge kind of guy, so I don't mind helping to figure this stuff out, but it's got a ways to go before I'm confident that your average user can be SURE to have a positive experience. TiVo can help that with better docs, and I think they could also greatly improve the initial cable card setup process with better software. If the cable people have ANY experience with cable cards at all, it's gonna be of the form "stick the card in a TV and see channels", and the TiVo experience is quite a bit different.

The end results are awesome, though, even if getting there is a bit rough.

If you have any trouble getting CableCards from your cable company, there are two things we'd like to ask you to do:

* First, call TiVo Customer Support and ask for help. One of the people on our HD team will stay on the line as you call back the cable company, and they'll help work things out for you. Do this first. We want you to get your CableCards!

* Second, take a moment and document your experience with the cable company for us. We have a webform for you to use, and these reports will be important in helping us assure a smooth customer experience, both today and down the road. It's really important to us that we have your issues documented well. Here's a link to the form.

I think over the next couple of months the S3 is going to push the CableCARD market forward. In the past CableCARDs were only used on high end TVs, and were kind of a after thought, so the number of people willing to push the cable companies to get them working was probably pretty low. However the CableCARDs are at the heart of the Series 3 and are required for full functionality of the device. Which means there are now thousands of people out there with incentive to push their cable companies until they figure out how to make CableCARDs work correctly. It's going to be good for the technology and ultimately end users who aren't so willing to live on the bleeding edge.

Comcast in Mass. scheduled an appt for the next day, and showed up 1/2 hour early. The cable guy had not installed CCs in a TiVo before. It took 1.5 hours because "dispatch" screwed up entering the numbers into their computer. Once that was straighened out, activation was a couple of minutes. While waiting, I went through the tutorials that had DL'd overnight, and afterwards, the cable guy said he wants one now.

I was shocked at how well my Comcast CC install went. The installer mentioned that he had only ever installed one before, and he didn't think people really used them. I told him the Series3 just came out so he'd probably see more of these. He was happy to read the instructions to installers that came in the box with the Tivo. He popped the cards in, called the office to activate them, went through the setup, and voila. The entire event took maybe 20-30 minutes. Painless.

I picked up my cards yesterday at the office and installed them this afternoon when the box was delivered. The technician had to send the signal several times but after about 10 minutes on the phone everything was working perfectly. The cards are $5.95 each per month (no install charge)

I got my analog channels converted to digital, so I'm basically set. I plugged in the right cable box and this caused the head end to reprogram my cable cards. It had been suggested that this might happen on AVS, but I was surprised at how rapidly it happened. I never even saw a picture on the TV, because as soon as I plugged in the box it reprogrammed my cable cards to be digital. So I could no longer see the cable box on analog channel 3. (I was plugging it in via RF just to get it working.)

Previously, and much to my surprise, I did get a call back from a supervisor at Comcast. She again said that my cable cards could not receive the digital versions of the analog channels. She refused to rise to the bait of "so you supplied defective cards then", she wouldn't listen to any reason about how the answer was in her hands if she'd just type the right thing into her computer.

She reiterated that I needed a cable box if I wanted the digital channels. I asked if this would cause the analog channels to magically become digital she denied this, saying only the box could get them. She said I needed a DCT700 box and my local office could supply one to me. I thought I'd give this a try as the local office is quite convenient.

The local office supplied the box, its tiny, about 4"x4"x1". They said there would be a charge for this, I pointed out their web site says its free for cable card users. That's a battle to be fought later, if I don't return the box. I plugged it in and as I said above saw nothing, I called the number to authorise the box, and we were both very confused as to why I was not seeing anything. Eventually I had the idea to plug it in to the OTA jack and looked at the cable to see that I really did have digital channels.

I could just return the box and say thanks for the magic token, or I could play with it a while and see to see what VOD and PPV it can get me. Most importantly, can I see the PPV on the TiVo.